Tom Fox's Blog: Tom Fox's NSA Surveilled Electronic Notepad (i.e. Blog)

We're getting delightfully close to the US publication of Dominus (which hits shelves on 3rd May 2016), and the publishers are really dancing the pre-publication dance superbly. Lots of excitement as we get ready to bring this book — which came out in the UK, New Zealand and Australian markets in October, and for which the many international editions are going out on their own special schedules (the Slovakian edition is gorgeous, and the Portuguese edition is getting the special book club and magazine treatment...) — into the hand of American readers. I'm excited!

A few things to watch out for as the U.S.A. publication gets closer. I'll be guest posting for the Mulholland Books website; for The Strand; My Book, the Movie; Writers Read; Campaign for the American Reader; and The Page 69 Test, amongst others. I'm looking forward to the chance to talk about my own writing, the books that are capturing my attention at the moment, the draws and perils of writing a Vatican-based thriller, and even the casting of the would-be film version of this particular book.

And, because voice is always fun, I'm really looking forward to a 40-minute live radio interview on publication day, 3rd May, with Pam Stack of the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Authors on the Air is a digital radio talk show whose mission is to introduce writers and their books to their listeners and readers. The show has a staggering 3,000,000 listeners in more than 50 countries worldwide, and 300,000 social media followers — and it's going to be an absolute treat talking to them about the sagas and adventures of writing Dominus.

And if that weren't enough, I hear a trailer is coming . . .

The pre-publication reviews are already starting to come in, and I'm just delighted at how much people are already enjoying Dominus, before it's even out! I can't wait to share it with more of you, and look forward to your letters, tweets and the like once it's stolen a bit of your time from you!

Cheers for now, T.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



There are conceivable reasons that you may not yet have read Karin Slaughter’s 2015 novel, Pretty Girls. Conceivable, but indefensible — because if, like me, you didn’t find your way to its initial July 2015 release, you’ve gone far too long without reading what is certainly one of the finest mystery thrillers of the past year, at least (and it was so recognised by being nominated in the Mystery & Thriller category of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2015).

I’ve been looking for a while for a mystery thriller (that unique combination of such closely related genres) that would really hook me. One that would provide actual thrills, a real mystery and a catching pace with solid writing, witty humour, engaging characters and . . . basically, the whole cake, and the invitation to eat it too. PRETTY GIRLS was a book I picked up through reader recommendations (I often ask readers to recommend what I might read ‘next’, and this one was mentioned so often I couldn’t pass it by), and, being a fan of Slaughter’s writing for years, I was fairly certain I was going to enjoy it. I had no idea how much I was going to love it. I’d thought it was going to be a source of bit-by-bit reading for a week or two; instead, I consumed it, mostly without breathing, over just a few days and two long flights.

The novel doesn’t, at first, shriek out its secrets with overstated drama or horror. An eerie first-person reflection by a figure we spend a considerable portion of the novel trying to identify, reflects on the loss of his daughter. The words are addressed to her, to the missing, and hint at a grief we gradually learn infects so many of the characters in this ensemble book, but none more than its chief joint protagonists: sisters Claire and Lydia. Two women whose lives have led them in radically different directions, shaped by the common starting point of losing a sister years before in a still unexplained disappearance. ‘What happened to Julia?’ The question haunts the sisters as one goes on to drugs and a lower-class life barely rescued from the gutters and the other marries a somewhat feckless man who nonetheless works business magic and transforms them both into the elite upper classes of the urban south. But the same grief consumes parents, grandparents, neighbours — a whole community.

And then another young woman goes missing. There are features of the woman that remind Claire of her missing sister, and she can’t get the two cases out of her mind; until, following a moment of unexpected passion with her husband, her world changes again. Her husband is murdered in front of her, and with his sudden death everything around her starts to fall apart. In a series of revelations about which it is impossible to say much in a review, since each is so unexpected and surprising that mentioning them here would ruin the delight of having them spring out of the pages, Claire and Lydia both learn that their sister’s disappearance all those years ago was far from the only tragedy hidden away in their lives — and far from the last.

Slaughter’s writing is superb. She’s earned her Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller status on merit, together with all her many other awards. PRETTY GIRLS is one of those strange beasts of fiction that manages to keep you frightened, horrified and shocked (including one of the finest sudden-reveal plot twists in recent memory, about which I’m also not going to tell you anything), while at the same time never letting you go long without laughing. Her quips about culture and society are spot on (describing a private school ethnic food event as a ‘week-long fundraiser where the whitest men and women in North Atlanta sat around in Dolce & Gabbana sampling pirogies and Swedish meatballs made by their children’s nannies’), and there’s an embarrassing familiarity to the honest humanity of her characters (I laughed with a certain shame when Lydia ‘turned up the radio [in her car], which is how she used to fix strange car noises before she dated a mechanic’). The characters are alive, funny, familiar — which makes the horrors they face all the more agonising, and their struggles to figure out what is happening as the world comes apart that much more compelling.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. The ‘slaughter’ of the author’s name is a kind of portent of some of the more gruesome elements it contains. But if you’re able to stomach the shock to the system that Karin Slaughter makes so vividly real, you’ll find PRETTY GIRLS simply one of the best reads of the year. Last year, certainly; but for me, of 2016 as well. I haven’t yet read anything to top it.



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The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors, with his Never Let Me Go amongst my all-time favourite books. And so I, like everyone else, was anticipating the release of his latest work — even once all the hype of his 'roving off into the realm of fantasy' started to make its rounds. As a reader who loves multiple genres, and an author who likes to write in several, I have absolutely nothing against the idea of an author best known for writing of English aristocracy or haunting boarding schools, suddenly stepping into the realm of Arthurian legend, replete with dragons, knights and ogres. Let the master write; let the story be told!

That said, I found THE BURIED GIANT a difficult book. The writing is atmospheric, as I would expect of Ishiguro, and the dialogue clearly, and effectively, aimed at romantic visions of bygone ways of speaking; yet the (deliberately) slow pace at which the story unfolds makes it a read that requires a certain 'I don't think I quite like this yet, but I'm not giving up' sort of commitment. Of course, the slow pace is something at which Ishiguro is aiming: this is not an 'action' story, but one that begs the very question whether time, pace, and the general meandering nature of life stir us (and our memories, our selves) in way that the race of battle and thrill of action don't. And Ishiguro doesn't just want to ask that question: this book causes the reader to engage with it in a kind of experiential way. Can a story which, by most reckonings, has no discernible, concrete plot for at least the first 200 pages of the book (rather than most novels, which disclose their plot within the first twenty or thirty pages), cause us to ask different kinds of questions about stories themselves? About these characters? About how we think, and reason, and remember — and forget?

And yet, and yet . . . as much as this 'experiment' into a different mode of storytelling (which I wouldn't so much call 'fantasy' as 'parable') is unique and intriguing, as much as I directly sensed I was being told, 'Don't treat this like every other story: try to feel your way through it differently', and even as much as I very much enjoyed the soft touch Ishiguro always brings to his insights, I can't say that the overall effect of the novel tugged at me quite the way it has at others. Without delivering any spoilers, I can say that the 'surprise' ending didn't really come as a surprise to me — it seemed the only way the story could go in those final pages — and THE BURIED GIANT certainly doesn't fit into Kirkus's framework of 9 Novels Whose Endings Will Shock You (though the general review of the book on Kirkus is quite good). And I couldn't help thinking, coming to the end of the 317th (and final) page, that this would have worked much better as a short story or novella; its length, while being part of that 'slow down and ponder; remember and forget' ethos at which the author was aiming, made long swaths of it simply far too slow.

But I still confess (happily, unabashedly) to having enjoyed the book. I picked it up because Neil Gaiman (on the back cover) said that 'THE BURIED GIANT does what important books do: it remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave' — and he's not wrong in this writing. Even though the pace was at times excruciatingly slow, and the ending far more predictable than surprising, the questions the book asks — about living with or forgetting the past; about the pain of revenge; of whether memories aid or destroy us — are questions that do stick in your mind. I don't find myself wandering around the streets in a genuinely existential haze, as I did for weeks after reading Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; but it still got me thinking. And it still, in its own magical way, took me off to another land and time, where dragons and ogres help you ask questions of yourself, and your own world, that you wouldn't ask without them.

A solid book: a venture into new territory, hearty food for thought, though possessing its own frustrating elements and disappointments. The question that lingers with any reader of THE BURIED GIANT is whether we will remember, or forget, our encounter with Ishiguro's parable. And which, in the end, really suits us best? It's a question I can imagine the author would only be happy we asked.



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At the urging of my publishers, as well as not a few of you who have (smashingly!) found ways to get messages through to me that suggest only prehistorical cave-creatures don't use social media, I've at last succumbed and found my way into this whole social fray.

My first thoughts: so many thanks to all the readers of DOMINUS, GENESIS and EXODUS in their first editions, who've loved them as much as they have. It's been a thrill for me, really. And with the US editions coming out in May, together with many international editions and translations appearing even now, it's one that's continuing.

I'll try to learn to 'be social' here and on Twitter (I'm on @reallyTomFox), and would love to hear from you! Please do be in touch, and enjoy your reading!

Cheers, T.